3/5 stars The Everlasting , by Alix Harrow (2025) If you like the Arthurian legend then you'll either love this, because it's an homage, or you'll hate this, because it's derivative. The Everlasting is a time travel fantasy novel. Owen Mallory is a historian living in the nation of Dominion. His field of study is the legend of Una Everlasting, the Lady Knight (or the Red Knight), whose valiant stories of conquest in the name of the Queen form the very bedrock of the nation.

4/5 stars The Memory of Animals , by Claire Fuller (2023) I'm always surprised when a post-apocalyptic novel surprises me. There are so many ways to do and say and show the same things that others have already done and said and shown. The Memory of Animals doesn't escape all of this sort of repetition, but it is a unique take on the story. The main character is Neffy (Nefeli), a former marine biologist specializing in octopuses, who was let go and is now disgraced and stra

3/5 stars I Who Have Never Known Men , by Jacqueline Harpman (1995) Translated by Ros Schwartz I finished this a while back and it's been tough to get myself to write about it... because I know a lot of people love it, and I think it's because they feel it's really thoughtful and deep, in that Handmaid's Tale kind of way that says something about our misogynistic culture. And I'm not saying they're wrong. It just didn't speak to me in that way. But I really liked it for the

3/5 stars The Last Murder at the End of the World , by Stuart Turton (2024) "Solve the murder to save what's left of the world..." It's...

5/5 stars The Girl in Red (2019), and Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook (2017) , by Christina Henry Trigger Warnings (both...

4/5 stars Chain-Gang All Stars , by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (2023) Trigger Warnings: Graphic violence, Imprisonment and enslavement,...

2/5 stars Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel (2022) Oh, Emily. How I adored Station Eleven - which I just read for a second...

2/5 stars How High We Go in the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu (2022) I saw this compared favorably to Emily St. John's Station Eleven, which...

3/5 stars The Power, by Naomi Alderman (2016) TW: Physical violence, murder, rape (men towards women, and women towards men) The Power...

3/5 stars Sorrowland, by Rivers Solomon (2021) The first 3/4 of this book were pretty masterful, in my opinion. The final 1/4 -...

1/5 stars The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris (2021) Y I K E S. Huh. That was unexpected and not... umm... yeah, just not...

5/5 stars The Deep , by Rivers Solomon (2019) Decades back, pregnant African slaves were thrown from slave ships into the ocean. Their...

4/5 stars The Kingdoms, by Natasha Pulley (2021) Kingdoms is a very cool and complex Victorian-era/Georgian-era time travel book of...

2/5 stars Long Division, by Kiese Laymon (2013) This one's a thinker. The book is two separate but very intertwined stories. One starts...

3/5 stars overall Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation, Authority, & Acceptance, by Jeff Vandermeer (2014) Rating this was tough because...

4/5 stars Little Eyes, by Samanta Schweblin (2018) Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (2020) Little Eyes is a creepy but...

3/5 stars Parable of the Sower (1993) & Parable of the Talents (1998), by Octavia Butler Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought....

4/5 stars ... I think? The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins (2015) Uhhmmm. So. THAT was weird. Honestly it's the weirdest book...

3/5 stars The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, by Suzanne Collins (2020) Listen, I'm just a sucker for a good prequel. I enjoyed this book,...

2/5 stars Exhalation: Stories, by Ted Chiang (2019) I didn't love this collection of stories, but I did really enjoy some of them, and...